Tempest (24 page)

“Colm…” Nichol grasped for him, releasing the log, and sank immediately. Colm tried desperately to assess where the rest of the damnable spines he carried were, then went after Nichol, gripping him under his arms and twisting his tail awkwardly to get them both to the surface again.

Nichol's eyes were closed, and Colm realized after a moment that he could feel the vibration of Nichol's heartbeat, and that it was getting slower. He reached down to Nichol's side and pulled the spine out. It was a small thing, but clearly it was doing more damage than was evident from the size of the wound. Colm had to get Nichol back to the Cove. Meg would know what to do.

But how would he? How could Colm move Nichol when he could barely move himself in this strange new form? And why, why had it happened? If water was the catalyst for his transformation, then perhaps air would turn him back again.

Colm pushed Nichol up onto the dock, making sure his head was out of the water, before heaving himself up onto the rocks. He was longer now, the tail protruding far past where his feet would have stopped, but his arms felt stronger. Colm dragged his new body out of the water, coiling his tail in close, and stared up at the blue sky, willing for it to change him back.
Please…please…
All he got was light-headed, though, the air rasping uncomfortably through his chest until he couldn't hold himself up any more, and fell back into the water.

The sea revived him like before, and Colm gnashed his sharp new teeth with frustration. What was he to do? How could he get Nichol back to where someone could care for him?

Swimming was the only answer, but it would be difficult. There was no choice, though. It was either face difficulty or face utter failure, and that end result didn't bear thinking about. He could do this. How hard could swimming be when you were shaped like a fish?

To his dismay, Colm found out that it was incredibly hard. He had no experience in the water, didn't understand how to keep himself afloat without thrashing, and thrashing about dunked Nichol's head under the water. It was exhausting, dragging him along the surface, fighting for every foot of distance they achieved, and all the while Nichol grew colder and colder, his heartbeat slowing ever further, his lungs growing still.

Colm had to persist, though. Nichol was all that mattered now.

Once they reached the regular docks, it got better. Colm could pull himself from boat to boat, using his newfound arm strength to propel them through the water as he fought on. Past the
Serpent's Tail
, oh, he longed to stop right here, but Lew wouldn't be aboard; few fishermen went out these days. He had to go farther.

Colm made it to within a hundred yards of the Cove without being seen. The water was disgusting this close to the city, filthy with sewage and waste that made his gills feel clogged, but he had to get Nichol onto the quay. As soon as he was close enough to try to push him up, Colm let himself surface. He had a full-body sense of where things were in the water now, but that ability didn't extend to land.

An instant after Colm's head breeched the water, someone screamed. One scream led to more, and Colm didn't know exactly what they were seeing when they looked at him, but it had to be frightful.
Monster…
He couldn't think about himself right now. He didn't have the time. He had to take care of Nichol.

Colm slung Nichol up onto the cobblestones of the quay, as gently as he could given his poor positioning. Nichol was still breathing, and his heart was still beating, but just barely. Colm wanted to scream himself, to scream and get Nichol help, but his voice… The last thing he needed was to make a noise that would frighten the people around him even more.

Apparently, the sight of him was more than enough to inspire violence, at least. A broken brick suddenly crashed into Colm's shoulder, knocking him back into the water. He surfaced angrily, the yell that he instinctively tried to make coming out as vicious clicks and hissing. Colm couldn't leave yet. He had to make sure Nichol was taken care of—

Another brick hit him in the chest as he tried the lever himself up. The one after that knocked his head, and Colm fell back into the water, utterly dazed. He smelled—no,
tasted—
his own blood in the water, and his new body's instincts kicked in, his tail writhing weakly in an attempt to get him away from the source of his pain.

Oars splashed down into the water beside him and above him, and as Colm's head cleared, he saw the sharp edge of one come scything down at an angle, and just managed to dodge it. Swimming still felt awkward, but it was a lot easier without Nichol in his arms, and Colm slid deeper into the water, out of sight, and headed away from the oily, clinging refuse of the docks.

His new, unburdened body was full of energy, a seemingly boundless stamina that Colm had never experienced before. While Colm's mind wanted to stop, to process and understand what had happened, his body fought it for control and won. With no Nichol to care for, Colm's blood risen and pumping fast, it would be so easy to go back and grab one of those people from the dock, drag them down into the water and tear—

No
. Colm instinctively shied away from the violence of that thought. He had to get away from people, away from temptation. His tail, strong and muscular and powerful, propelled him forward. He could feel the fish scatter as they detected his presence. He could feel the glide of boats on the surface of the water, feel larger, darker creatures moving farther out in the deeper parts of the water, where the sea wall fell away. Sharks—the thought of confronting one filled his new brain with a vicious thrill of expectation, and so Colm deliberately steered back into the shallows. He swam past the sea wall, away from Caithmor, away from everything he knew… Nothing touched him, nothing disturbed him. If he could just swim like this, on and on and on forever, Colm thought he might be all right.

What was this, though? This thing that was coming up on him, small but fast, harrying him. It nipped at his tail, and Colm rounded on it in a fury, teeth bared and ready to bite. The small thing darted away, then back in again, too nimble to catch. It teased and bit and infuriated Colm into following it, until they were in such shallow water that he could feel the sand scrape against his belly as he fought to stay beneath the surface. There was a single shaft of light ahead, shining down from the top of the cove… Rocks, the entrance, and there was the little beach. Colm was inside the cove, the Searunner's cove. He hadn't been here since his father's funeral, he didn't even remember how to—oh gods, Rory!

The anger and bloodlust broke and shattered in Colm's mind, the shards washing away with each new beat of his heart. Rory had found him and brought him here, to a place of safety, and Colm had tried to kill him in exchange.

The reality of what had happened to him suddenly fell on Colm like a tidal wave. For the first time since his change—gods, could it really have been just an hour ago, perhaps less?—he looked at himself. His hands, always long-fingered, were now webbed, and his nails had become harder and sharper. The skin of his stomach and the bottoms of his arms were a mottled bluish white, the color of a frozen corpse. By contrast, the scales over his tail and climbing up his back had a dark iridescence to them, like the shell of an abalone. His shoulders and spine bristled with more of those thin, venomous filaments, and his head…

Colm pulled himself up onto the beach, ignoring his growing need for oxygen as he waited for the water to settle enough that he could see himself. His reflection wavered in the ripples and the faint light, but it was enough. Just one glance was enough.

His hair was gone, all gone, the top of his head covered in scales. Small spines, striped blue and green and white, feathered back from his temples, and the dorsal fin that he'd felt between his shoulders had a crest that extended all the way up the back of his head. Colm turned his head and watched the crest flare with distress as his lungs began to burn. His gills, three long slits that had been red before but were rapidly becoming a pale pink, fluttered uselessly. Only his eyes were the same, such a pale, icy blue that they were practically colorless.

Fins. Gills. The teeth of a predator. Colm knew the secret of his birth now. He knew the reason his father had run as fast as he could from his home. Ger Weathercliff had made a monster, and the only safe place for them was far away from the treacherous, changeable sea.

Colm might have killed Nichol, without even realizing it. Nichol might lie dead right now. Colm might have been too late despite how hard he tried, despite everything…

Colm screamed, an ululating hiss that echoed off the walls of the cove and up into the sky, a fierce, hideous sound that would have chilled the blood of a mariner. He screamed until the spots swimming in front of his eyes became nothing but overwhelming dark, and he slumped limply down into the water. It was just deep enough here to reach his gills, and little by little, it revived Colm.

He didn't want to be revived. He didn't want to be here. He didn't want to be this
thing
that might have killed his lover. Colm rolled over onto his back in the shallows, oblivious to the discomfort of mashing his fins against the sand, and stared up at the thin sliver of sky. His face breached the water, just his face, and Colm stared at the sky and felt the tremors of his grief rack his frame, all the worse because he found he couldn't cry. He wanted to, his soul was desperate to prove its human loyalty with tears, but nothing came. There was nothing.

Actually…there was something. It wasn't a touch, it was barely even a ripple, but when Rory settled down in the shallows not far from Colm, Colm could feel him. He felt the selkie's even breaths, and the steady beat of his heart. He felt the subvocal grunt Rory made as he settled deeper into his place, and all of it together was just enough to keep Colm from trying to rip out his own eyes. Because he wasn't alone, and he couldn't bear the thought of not knowing what Nichol's fate would be. He had to cope with this transformation somehow, to bear it long enough to discover the truth. But that didn't mean he would let himself enjoy it.

Colm and Rory lay in the sand together until the light faded from the sky, and stars came out and the stillness of the cove was slowly overcome by harder winds and bigger waves. When the tide finally covered him completely with dark, silty water, it felt like being buried. Colm closed his eyes and let the sensation carry him into an uneasy sleep.

Chapter Seventeen

Colm barely moved for two days. He stayed where he was and let the tides flow in and out around him, always just deep enough to get water to his gills but shallow enough to leave part of his body free of the water. His new skin didn't care for the air. It dried him out, made him feel chill and brittle, but the feeling of comfort wasn't something that he had a right to anymore.

Colm's mind turned in circles, always coming back to Nichol and whether or not he was still alive. He knew, he
knew
that what he was doing was a poor way to deal with his grief and guilt, that if he were serious about finding out what had happened to Nichol he should be moving, scouting, getting as close as he could without giving himself away and listening to the gossip at the docks, but he felt too sluggish to move. It was easier to lie here and stare at the sky, and let the gnawing grip of hunger distract him from the chaos in his mind.

Colm's lassitude lasted up until a fish slapped him in the face. He started, accidentally gulping a breath of air before he remembered not to, and ducked his head beneath the water to refresh himself before he turned to confront Rory, who had the wriggling fish caught firmly between his teeth. The seal twisted around and smacked the fish's head against Colm's again.

“Little beast,” Colm tried to say, but stopped halfway through when it emerged as nothing but a hiss. Rory huffed, then went to smack him again. Colm caught the fish before it could land, wrapping his long fingers around the slippery body and holding tight. He could feel the blood pulsing fast and frightened under the scaly skin, and it made him feel…famished.

He inspected the fish. A lionsmane perch, a fairly small one, hardly more than a mouthful…but no, gods no, Colm didn't eat fish live! He couldn't even pry a sea roach from its shell without blanching. No.

Colm let the fish go. Rory barked irritably, darted after it and recaptured it, then brought it back to Colm.

Colm shook his head. Rory glared at him.

How could he make him understand, when he couldn't speak? Colm thought for a moment, then spread one of his webbed hands out beneath the water and made it quaver, very faintly, mimicking the fish's own quivering. Then he shook his head again.

If seals could roll their eyes, Rory would have. As it was, he flipped the fish up into the air, then snapped its head off on the way down. The severed body splashed down into the water, convulsing and spilling blood but very clearly no longer alive. Rory barked again.

The scent was delicious. Red soaked the water that washed around Colm's head, and it tasted just as wonderful as it smelled. His sense of hunger got the better of him and Colm grabbed the fish and bit into its soft underbelly before his conscious mind could stop him. Soft…sweet…the meat was rich and dark in places, pungent and tainted in others, but Colm ate it all with relish.

He ate until there was nothing left but bloodstains drifting away in the shallow waves. Rory disappeared for a few minutes, then returned with another fish, this one already decapitated. He pushed it at Colm's face, and this time Colm took it and ate without complaining. It would have been harder to bear if the fish had tasted raw or unappetizing, but it just tasted like food. Like delicious, necessary food. Colm's sense of taste had changed just as much as his physical form, and a part of him felt bitter about the fact that the food he now had to eat wasn't a hardship for him. Nothing should come easily after what he'd done.

Rory now seemed to devote himself to helping Colm as much as he'd once gone out of his way to harass him. It took plenty of nipping and tugging, but he finally managed to pull Colm down into deeper, richer waters toward the entrance to the cove. The darkness beneath the water was no problem. In fact, it seemed like Colm could see farther with his new eyes than he ever could above the water. Perhaps it was because his knack was a constant now, always surrounding him, telling him what was going on around him. Colm floated in the blurry delineation between water vaguely warmed by the sun and the deeper, colder currents and let his senses stretch out deliberately, seeking for the first time since he'd delivered Nichol back to the docks.

Caithmor itself was easy to orient on, a constant turbulence as the waves broke against the enormous rocks that supported the city's seaside edge. That turbulence was increased by the movement of boats and the way that schools of fish steered clear of the area. Colm could almost tell what type of fish they were simply by the way the schools moved together, and he easily sensed where the lionsmane perch Rory had brought him were milling, still a bit disturbed by the selkie's intrusion.

To breathe underwater, to look around and sense so much more than he ever had before in his life… Once upon a time, this would have been a gift to Colm. If he had come here and never met Nichol, if he'd known his family was well and safe, if Colm had simply taken a moment to step into the sea before he grew so attached to life on land, this could have been glorious. It was a simple, brutal explanation for all his differences, for his mother's disappearance, his father's fear, for why Honored Srain's spell of magic detection hurt him so badly. It explained all the things Colm never quite learned to do right, all the parts of being human he never quite mastered. Colm wasn't human. He wasn't even as close as Rory, who had lived a long life with a loving family before letting himself change. He was half
mer
, and he couldn't ignore that, even if he didn't understand how such a thing could come about.

Colm never should have existed, but he did. And now he had to continue to exist until he knew what had happened to Nichol. Colm shut his eyes as he was suddenly racked by a whole-body shudder.

Rory swam nearby, keeping his distance for a while before his patience apparently began to run out. He circled closer and closer, finally swimming a path around Colm's head until their eyes met again. He pressed his muzzle against Colm's nose, then turned and swam toward the school of perch. When Colm didn't follow fast enough, Rory turned around and nipped at the broad fin at the base of Colm's tail.

I understand
, Colm thought, no longer bothering with attempting to speak but holding his hands out placatingly. He swam after Rory, amazed at how quickly he could cover distance now. He outpaced the selkie before they reached the fish, but quickly learned upon arriving that he didn't have nearly the same dexterity that Rory did. The selkie's seal form was short and sleek and could turn in a flash, whereas Colm was too long and awkward to turn fast enough. In the time it took him to catch a single perch, Rory had caught and eaten three. The selkie swam over lazily and snapped the head off the one that struggled in Colm's long grasp, looking pleased with himself. Colm ate and tried to be grateful.

As the sea grew darker with the setting of the sun, Rory led the way back to the cove, very adamantly prodding Colm up until he was in the shallows again. Colm lay down carefully on the sand and Rory snugged up next to him, not afraid of Colm's spines piercing his thick, tough skin. Colm let his face break the surface and stared up at the stars, glittering like the distant lights of a celestial city. The air was dry and cold, and Colm could hear the harshness of the wind rolling across the cliffs above him, but for all that he was learning to exist in this new world, it was the one he looked at now that he still yearned for.

Tomorrow, he would go back to Caithmor. Tomorrow he'd try to find out about Nichol.

* * * * *

Getting back to the city was simple enough. Colm avoided everything that could have crossed his path with a graceful fluidity that he would never have attributed to himself at the beginning. Working to keep up with Rory had been good for that, at least. Forcing himself to push farther into the dark, greasy waters of Caithmor's harbor was hard, but Colm still made himself do it. He slid along the keels of the boats like a shadow, surfaced beneath the docks closest to the Cove, and settled in to listen.

His ears picked up sound differently now, and everything above the water felt muffled and dull. Not to mention he couldn't keep his head out in the air for too long without becoming faint. It was bothersome, but that hardship was nothing compared to his feverish curiosity. Colm spent the busiest part of the day patiently straining with his ears and grudgingly replenishing his breath, but he didn't learn anything other than the fact that his appearance had been enough to cause quite a commotion. He heard Nichol mentioned twice by name, but there was nothing definitive about his status, only the fact that—

“Poor lad laid out like that on the stones, pale as death,” Kiara the sea-roach vendor sighed. “His gran is beside herself, what with poor Nichol, and then the nephew gone missing like that.”

“Do y'reckon they had a falling-out?” another girl asked—Colm didn't get her name; he had to duck back under the water. “Maybe Nichol killed 'im and left 'im out for the mer, only the mer came for Nichol as well.”

“Nichol wouldn't have killed that boy, any more than my own sister would kill me,” Kiara said staunchly. “They were the best of friends, even when Windlove and his lads were still hanging about. Nichol'd never do anything hurtful to him.”

“It's the mer part I don't understand,” the other girl confessed, ignoring Kiara's protestation. “If the mer got the other one, then what was it doing bringing Nichol back here?”

“How would I know?” Kiara asked, exasperated, then ignored the girl altogether in favor of a customer. It was the closest Colm got all day to hearing something of worth, but not close enough. He stayed and waited all through the long day, watching the shells of eviscerated sea roaches fall down through the cracks in the planks above him and listening until his head felt full of sand and his gills coated with grease.

In the end, it took Rory appearing and nipping at his tail for Colm to snap out of the fog of his day and swim back to the actual cove. The fog stayed with him, though, and it wasn't until Rory smacked him with another headless fish that Colm realized it was because he was hungry. He took the meal and inclined his head gratefully, and when Rory bumped him next time, it was gentle, and without teeth.

Colm's head felt raw after exposure to the air all day, and that night he left his face underwater for the first time. He still stared up at the stars for as long as he could, but they were indistinguishable from the sky under the wavering surface. No answers yet, nothing useful. Colm would try again.

Rory seemed to dislike the water close to the city, and Colm couldn't blame him. The selkie left the cove every morning with Colm but went his own way once they reached the sea wall. Colm wove his way beneath the boats, dodging offal and anchors, and took his position beneath the dock to listen for anything new.

For three more long days, there was nothing. There was no word of Nichol or Megg, and the only other things of faint interest were the tales of services at the Ardeaglais, the number of parishioners vastly increased since so many had caught sight of Colm. There was a panic at the thought of mer stalking the docks of Caithmor, and on the fourth day, a group of priests led a vast congregation down to the edge of the water, where they used the prayers of the faithful to help lay a spell of protection across the entirety of the harbor.

Colm, who had fled as soon as he identified the voice of Honored Srain, was barely touched by the change in the water as he swam out past Caithmor's pillar, but he felt its aftereffects quite clearly. All the creatures that clung close to the rocky sea shelf beneath the city were scalded, as though the water had turned boiling hot. Those who couldn't swim deep enough or far enough in time died and floated to the surface in droves.

Unfortunately for the priests, they hadn't accounted for the need for specificity. The spell they cast targeted inhuman creatures, which included the land-loving fish that schooled in the harbor. The bodies that surfaced went to waste, the meat of the fish puckered and the skin broken by boils. Colm had tried one, thinking it would save him the trouble of killing something else to eat, but the flesh was gritty and ashen on his tongue, and he spat out his mouthful in disgust.

Needless to say, the spell was lifted by the next morning. The only creature other than fish that it had killed was a selkie—not Rory, a young one that Colm hadn't recognized. After its pelt sloughed off, its childlike human body was pushed ashore by its grieving kin. Colm watched the somber affair from a great distance. The other selkies were wary, despite the fact that he and Rory shared a space at night, and he couldn't blame them for fearing him. The child's body was gone by the next dawn.

A full two weeks after Colm's transformation, things had quieted down in Caithmor. The fish die-off had diminished the people's fervor, and things seemed to be slowly going back to normal. Colm didn't hear anything new about Nichol, no word on his health and only occasional mentions of Megg, but still he swam to the docks and listened every day. He had to know for sure. He had to be certain that Nichol was well again. Not happy, Colm imagined that Nichol was probably devastated, and likely to stay that way for a long time. He had trusted Colm, and in return, Colm's body had betrayed both of them, leaving Nichol more alone than ever before, if he'd even survived.

You couldn't have known.
That was the only thought that gave Colm a hint of solace during the long, dry days of listening and the too-short times of dreaming beneath the waves. There was no way he could have known what he was, not a hint from his father to go on and everyone saying that his mix would be selkie, it was always selkie along the coast. Nothing to be ashamed of, for the most part. Safe, if occasionally heartbreaking. Selkies were not monstrous, not like what had emerged from the salty sea and pierced Nichol with its poisonous spine.

Colm hadn't known, and neither had Nichol, and in his clearest moments, when he wasn't hungry or pained or terribly sad, Colm could see the truth in that. Most of the time, though, objectivity was beyond him. All he could feel was remorse, all he knew was what he'd done, all he could hope for was Nichol's life. Beyond that, Colm didn't let himself consider anything for very long.